


The Maiden Voyage of The S.S. Bad Touch

by sunspot (unavoidedcrisis)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Animals, Banter, Bears, Boats and Ships, Desert Island Fic, Dolphins & Whales, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-12
Updated: 2012-10-12
Packaged: 2017-11-16 04:24:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/535467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unavoidedcrisis/pseuds/sunspot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Take one demon and add an angel. Now subtract their powers and strand far from humans. The math is conclusive: it's time to get off the island. <strong>Even if it means paddling.</strong></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Maiden Voyage of The S.S. Bad Touch

**Author's Note:**

> Written for spn_j2_bigbang 2011. Alt-s4 story line, if Ruby and Castiel were part of Team Free Will from the beginning. Thank you to everyone who helped me out on this one, absolutely could not/would not have done it without you.
> 
> And a hundred extra thank yous, the kind made of puppy kisses and sprinkles, to attempt_unique who was amazing to work with and who produced such amazing art for this fic. Please, please, [please go to the art post](http://attempt-unique.livejournal.com/48430.html) and leave ALL the praise, because she completely deserves it. I am actually kind of freaking out to see it all together, because yowza, that's hot art. I am just giddy with happy.
> 
> Note: This story contains strong language and talk of dolphin-rape, but in the light-hearted, informational way. Castiel is just trying to make conversation.

The plan has seven steps, and Sam writes them all down on a diner napkin while he, Dean and Cas have lunch.

#1 - Castiel kills all the demons  
#2 - Castiel steals map from demons  
#3 - Castiel follows map, finds whatever it is that the magic thingy is  
#4 - Castiel gets thingy, brings it back to HQ  
#5 - Sam and Dean eat pancakes, watch movies, and wait for Cas to finish with steps 1-4  
#6 - Figure out what the thingy is and does  
#7 - Profit (by stopping the apocalypse)

Castiel isn't thrilled, but Sam and Dean both agree it's a pretty decent plan and that's two against one.

"The beauty is in the simplicity," Dean says, slurping his coffee noisily.

Castiel and Sam share an annoyed look.

"See," Dean continues his explanation around mouthfuls of coffee and a club sandwich. "Sam and I are big ticket items right now, right, with this apocalypse thing and the seals and everything. Everyone will be looking for us. But then, Castiel, you're like, untraceable. And even if the demons find you, you can blast them right back to hell, right?"

Castiel doesn't say anything right away, just sips his ice water and stares at Sam's plan-napkin. "Fine," he manages. "I'll stop by your room first thing in the morning, we'll synchronize our watches, and then head out." Ever since the debacle with Alastair and Uriel, when he had started actively working with Sam and Dean to stop the seals from being broken, Castiel had taken an interest in spy novels and old black and white espionage movies. The lingo is starting to slip into his vocabulary. He doesn't even wear a watch.

Sam and Dean just figure the eccentricity is a small price to pay to have an angel on their team.

First thing in the morning comes and goes, and Castiel doesn't show up for watch synchronizing or anything else. After the ninth time Dean calls, gets his answering service and hangs up, he tosses his phone angrily. Sam catches it automatically without looking up. "Calm down," he says. "I'm sure he lost track of time reading or something. Remember when he found Ian Fleming books at the library, and we didn't hear from him for six days?"

"Yeah, _Chitty Chitty Bang Bang_ gave him nightmares."

"Sentient motor vehicles aren't a joke, Dean, remember?" Sam does his best Castiel impression and gives Dean a pointed look over the top of his computer screen. Any other time, it would have killed, but Dean's worried, and he doesn't reply. Sam sighs and turns back to his research.

Ruby shows up with a bag of sandwiches a few hours later. "So, have we thought any more about getting that map?" she asks as she passes around lunch.

Sam shows her the napkin with the plan on it, and she grins. "Oh, I bet Angel Lips loved this."

"Yeah, well, obviously not, because he didn't show," Dean grumbles, taking an overlarge bite from his sandwich and chewing grotesquely.

"But that's not like him, right?" Ruby says, lowering herself onto the closest bed and toeing off her boots. "He's Mister Responsibility all the time; he wouldn't just skip out on the plan, even if it is a shitty plan."

Dean glares. "It's not. It's elegant in its simplicity."

"You can say that eighty times, Dean, it doesn't make it any truer. You guys totally took the elevator this time."

"What do you mean, the elevator?" Dean asks, not sure he really wants to know what she means.

"You took the elevator and left him the shaft."

"… Oh, ew."

Ruby laughs at Dean's grossed-out expression. "You'd love to give Angel Boy the shaft, don't lie."

The only response she gets to that is Dean slamming the bathroom door, which in her books is a resounding _'you've got my number, sister.'_

Sam is still chewing the last bite of his sandwich and conscientiously trying to ignore them both. He thinks that between the three of them -- Dean, Ruby, and Castiel -- he puts up with a lot of extra headaches; despite that, the four of them actually work fairly well together. Thanks to The Arrangement.

The Arrangement is usually the only thing keeping Ruby and Castiel from actively trying to end each other in a variety of noisy and colourful ways, so it got its own capital letters. The Arrangement came to pass after one very stressful afternoon…

* * *

"Sam, I've found that book you -- oh."

Sam disentangled himself from Ruby as quickly as he could, straightening his pants and dragging his hand through his hair like that -- or anything else -- would help it look less disheveled, but Castiel had already seen more than he had ever wanted to. "I didn't realize I would be interrupting you while you… did things. My apologies," Castiel said awkwardly, staring at the book in his hands. Sam's boner ran away and hid forever.

"Yeah, well, knock next time, alright?" Ruby didn't bother trying to cover up, or make herself look any less debauched. The loose strap of her bra began to slide off her shoulder and Sam cringed inwardly when Castiel chose that moment to glance up.

"If the two of you had any sense of decorum, I would not need to knock. Here is your book. I hope you'll get back to work soon. The apocalypse will not be kind enough to wait for you two to... get your rocks off. And the apocalypse won't knock, either." Castiel tossed the book on the bed and disappeared before either Ruby or Sam could say anything else.

"I wish you would at least try to be nice to him," Sam sighed, standing up and reaching for his discarded tee-shirt.

"Oh come on, you're just going to quit on me now?" Ruby sulked well enough that she could have gone pro.

"Cas is right, we should be working on figuring out what the next seal is."

She stared at him like he'd sprouted another head. "You're serious?" When Sam opened the book and started reading, Ruby sat up so fast her bra flew across the room. Sam looked up quizzically and later commended himself at only staring at her naked breasts for a second.

"I can't believe it," she muttered, crossing the small motel room to the bathroom to run a comb through her hair. "This is so stupid. The world might be ending, and we're going to spend all our time stuck in a book? What about one last hurrah?"

"We won't need it if we can stop Lucifer before he even gets out of his box," Sam reminded her. When Dean got back to the room later that night, they still weren't speaking to each other.

The next afternoon, Dean, Sam and Ruby were in the car, headed for Ashburn, Georgia, when Castiel appeared next to Ruby in the back seat.

"Hello. I --"

"Really never knock, huh?" Ruby said coolly, pulling the edge of her jacket out from underneath him.

Castiel frowned. "I apologized for yesterday. I was really hoping we weren't going to mention it again. Ever."

"Why, what happened yesterday?" Dean asked, glancing in the rear view mirror. Ruby and Castiel were glaring at each other, and Sam was sinking lower in his seat, pretending he blended well with the leather upholstery (he did not).

"Nothing really, just your stupid angel --"

"I'm not stupid."

"He's not my angel." Dean and Castiel spoke at the same time, then Castiel took a moment away from glaring at Ruby to meet Dean's eyes in the mirror like they were trying to decide who was more right.

"I'm not his angel, either," Castiel said, turning back to Ruby smoothly.

"Well, _someone's_ apparently-not-stupid-but-he-could-have-fooled-me angel walked in on Sam and me to drop off some book because he didn't have the sense to knock." Ruby nudged Castiel with her elbow to emphasise, but Castiel had evidently woke up on the wrong side of the cloud because his angelic patience snapped and he lunged at her.

His hand around her throat was like an steel vice and the palm he pressed to her forehead was like nothing she had ever felt. Ruby squirmed in his grip and tried to get to one of her multiple concealed weapons but Castiel was doing something, forcing some feeling onto her that was making her dizzy and unfocused. She fell limply to one side.

"Cas!" Dean shouted from the front seat, pulling off to the side of the road. "Jeez," he hissed. He knew eventually someone would snap and kill Ruby, but he had really thought it was going to be him and not the almost endlessly patient angel. He didn't know if he was disappointed he wouldn't get to do it himself or just pleased it was getting done.

"I'm tired of her," Castiel growled and every fibre of him screamed out to kill her. He felt her shudder underneath his hands, almost as if she could hear the screaming, too, and recognized her fate. She was scared. Good.

"Cas, please," Sam said. "We can work something out so you guys never have to be in the same room or whatever, just don't... kill her. Just relax. Please." His voice was calm, cool, even a little detached. Even in spite of the very real, very imminent threat of burning, exploding shiny light death, Ruby realized found a second to be a little annoyed at his tone. Shouldn't Sam be a little more concerned about her safety? Stupid Winchesters.

Castiel regarded Sam for a moment, as if considering his offer. "I'm done making deals with demons," he said eventually.

"Yeah, everyone always _says_ that," Dean said dryly.

Sam was incredulous. "Really? You want to go there right now? This little situation can wait while we talk about who made what deal when and for what stupid reason?"

Dean gave him a dirty look. "Fine, later then. And Cas, look. She's on our side, she's more valuable alive, blah blah blah. If you're not going to do it for the good of the mission, at least do it for the good of the car, okay?"

For a tense moment, it didn't seem like Castiel was going to go for that either, but he let Ruby go and she scrambled across the backseat. They drove the rest of the way in complete, awkward silence that was colder than ice.

"He's fucking crazy," Ruby complained privately to Sam later. "Unbalanced."

"Yeah," Sam said noncommittally. He wasn't going to argue that there was something distinctly odd about Castiel, but Sam had always chalked that up to the whole 'angel' thing and less of a 'mentally unbalanced' thing. Honestly and objectively, he didn't think wanting to kill a demon was a completely unbalanced thing to want, especially for an angel and double-especially when it was _Ruby_. She had a way of getting on everyone's very last nerve for fun sometimes.

Sam was smart enough not to mention that.

\--

"She's insufferable," Castiel said to Dean in the next room. "I know your brother thinks she is very... helpful, but she is beginning to get on my nerves."

"Yeah, no kidding," Dean nodded. "I know it's so hard to get along with her, but we have stopped eight of the last ten seals from being broken, so... we're just going to have to suck it up, I guess."

\--

"What, you think I should just suck it up? He tried to kill me, Sam!"

A familiar sort of headache was starting to form right behind Sam's eyes. "I'm not saying you should be best friends with the guy, but can you just please relax and stop purposely antagonizing him?"

"Oh, of course you're taking his side," Ruby said, pulling on her jacket and heading for the door.

"Ruby --"

"Good night, Sam."

\--

"Good night, Dean."

"'Night, Cas," Dean said, looking at Castiel from the corner of his eye. The sudden end to the conversation made him a little uneasy, but it had been such a long day that Dean was willing to risk one seriously pissed off angel and one dead demon if it meant he got a shower and at least five hours of sleep.

\--

It wasn't hard for Castiel to find Ruby once he decided to look. He opted not to materialize right next to her in the crowded bar and instead approached her from the side.

"Oh, come on. What?"

Castiel could smell the alcohol on her already. Though he personally disapproved of using chemicals as an escape from an uncomfortable reality, Dean had one observed that a few drinks actually made Ruby's abrasive personality slightly more tolerable and he was willing to overlook his objections this once if it would help the conversation he wanted to have go over better.

"I want to talk to you about how I tried to kill you."

"Yes," Ruby said gravely. "I wanted to talk about that, too."

"Really?"

She slammed her empty glass on the bar. "No, asshole, I don't. Sam says to leave it, so I'm leaving it."

"Dean also suggested that we leave it." Someone behind Castiel bumped into him, and he crowded against Ruby awkwardly.

"So then, why aren't you leaving?"

There was a small quirk in Castiel's face that was almost a smile. "I try to take Dean's advice as infrequently as I can. Thus far, it's worked out mostly well for me," he admitted.

Ruby started at him for a second, then burst out laughing. It was mostly the alcohol, and maybe a little bit the ridiculous smile, or maybe just Ruby's distaste for most of the bullshit that came out of Dean Winchester's mouth, but she found she was highly amused.

Castiel had read a few interesting pieces on social interaction and making an enemy into an ally, and finding a commonality was often recommended. The laughter also seemed to show a willingness to let down her guard, even though he suspected the alcohol to be a largely contributing factor.

"That's the smartest thing I think I've ever heard you say," Ruby said, signalling the bartender. When she walked over to pour Ruby another double whisky sour, Ruby had her pour one for Castiel too.

Castiel regarded the glass set in front of him carefully before he drank from it. He drained it in one go and then stared at Ruby. "Can we talk openly for a few moments, now that we've drank together?"

Ruby shrugged one shoulder in what could have meant 'sure, okay' or 'you are endlessly annoying, please stop talking'. Castiel decided not to ask for clarification and just continued anyways as if it had definitely meant the first one.

"We don't like each other; we don't like being near each other or having to speak to one another. Unfortunately, for whatever our own reasons that we don't really have to disucss, we have signed onto this mission and we both intend to see it through, right?"

Ruby wondered briefly if it was a trick question, if the angel was trying to test her loyalty or something. "Yeah. I said I was in, so I'm in."

"Exactly. So we're both in, as you put it. So we don't have a choice but to be civil."

Ruby twirled her half-finished drink in one hand. "You're the one who tried to kill me, remember?"

"You think nothing you did or said in the last few weeks precipitated my outburst?" The bartender brought Castiel another drink, and he took it with murmured thanks and drained it without thinking.

"Maybe," she said. 

"We need to come to an arrangement," Castiel said, finally looking down into his empty glass. "This isn't bad."

"I know," Ruby grinned. "They're my favourite. What kind of arrangement did you have in mind?"

\--

And so, over a multitude of whisky sours, The Arrangement was laid out.

The most important part was Section One, which simply stated that Castiel would always knock if Ruby would always put a sock on the doorknob, and that failing the availability of socks to go on doorknobs, the blood of a lamb smeared on the door frame would be acceptable. A little old school, but hey, that meant they knew it worked.

Now, The Arrangement didn't end all the problems. Ruby was still routinely awful in small ways, to keep herself at the top of her game, and Castiel still reminded her sometimes that the gates of Heaven were forever barred to filthy demons, and they were both frequently insufferable toward the Winchesters because Winchesters of any size were damn hard to live with a lot of the time, but The Arrangement took care of most of the bigger, trying-to-murder-each-other problems.

Unless Castiel and Ruby were left alone for too long. No Arrangement in the universe could save them then.

* * *

It only takes another forty minutes of Dean restlessly waiting for Cas to return his calls before Ruby loses her mind a little bit. "Jeez, okay, we'll go look for him. Sam, you check the nearest library and just hope that if you find him, he's not reading Thomas the Tank Engine or something because I don't want to go through that shit again."

She stands up and starts looking for her boots. "Dean, see if you can find Uriel. I know he's a dick, but maybe he can help us find Castiel. Dicks stick together. God, that's a good tagline for a gay porn. I'll hit up the local demons. Maybe just regular hit them too. See if anyone knows anything..." she trails off when she realizes Dean is staring.

"You're not in charge," he says bluntly. Ruby rolls her eyes and turns to Sam.

"Oh, yeah, like that's likely," Dean huffs. "Look, we need a plan before we just go charging off. Just gimme a minute, I'll think of something."

They give him a minute.

"Okay, Ruby's going to go see if there's any demons around who might know what's up, I'm going to see if one of Cas's dick-angel friends have seen him, and Sam, check whatever library or bookstore you come across."

Sam shushes Ruby when she starts to tell Dean exactly where to go, because that would lead to a screaming match about 'been there, done that', and they split up to go look for the angel.

\--

Dean and Sam get back before Ruby does, both with no leads. Castiel still hasn't called.

Ruby walks in a few hours later, bruised and bleeding, but with enough swagger that Sam and Dean don't immediately panic.

"What the hell happened? Did you find Cas? Where is he?" Dean asks while Sam fetches the first aid kit.

"Not exactly, but I know where he is. You're not going to like it." Sam dabs at the cut on her forehead and she grimaces at him. "Thanks, Doctor Feelgood."

"Where's Castiel?" Dean says again, frustration dripping from his words.

"The demons, the ones I went to see, they tricked him into giving up his power."

"...Wait, what?''

Ruby is sure she wasn't accidentally speaking in Hungarian, so she returns Dean's blank stare with one of her own.

"What did they do to him?" Dean tries again, resisting the urge to smack her since she's already bleeding.

"Some seriously old, dark magic. Stuff they shouldn't have been able to do without big time help." She frowns and picks a shard of glass off her sleeve. "All I know is they banished him somewhere where he can't use his powers."

 _Banished is bad,_ Dean thinks. _Banished is very bad. But banished isn't dead._

"So, he's not dead?"

"Shouldn't be. Unless they banished him into a volcano."

"I doubt they did that," Sam says quickly when he sees the look on Dean's face.

"Well," Dean sighs, standing and checking to make sure his gun is loaded. "We're going back there and we're going to find out exactly what the hell is going on."

\--

The drive would have been tense even without Ruby riding shotgun, which she is. Sam and Dean both put up mild protestations, but she claims that navigator status allows her the front seat and they can't really argue if it means getting Castiel back in one piece.

It's a quiet, suburban house they pull up in front of and Dean hesitates for a moment before kicking in the side door. He always feels a pang of guilt, feels like he's ruining someone's American Dream when he messes up their homes. Then he remembers demons have probably killed whoever lived here already and that ruins all the American Dreams that aren't about zombies, and that he better get a move on before someone else dies.

Demons scatter like roaches when Dean, Sam, and Ruby come wheeling into the house, and in just half a minute of chaos, three are dead on the floor. Dean has the leader pinned faced down on the kitchen counter, with the demon-killing knife pressed tightly against his neck.

"Where is he?" Dean asks, voice tight and even. He's always scarier when he's being calm than when he's flying off the handle.

The demon laughs. "I don't know what you're talking about, boy." Dean pushes the edge of the knife a little deeper and the demon just laughs harder. "What? I'm supposed to spill everything, tell you all our plans, and then you'll let me live? I'm not an idiot."

Dean kills him then, because there's just no talking with some people (or demons).

"Awesome," Ruby drawls. "Now we get to do the research thing. Hooray. Because we definitely don't get to do enough of that."

Dean opens his mouth to snap at her, but she's right. The stack of books on the table is not only precariously tall, but each book has a particularly musty, old-book look to it. This is absolutely not Dean's wheelhouse. But luckily for Dean, it is Sam's.

"Look at these symbols," Sam says, holding up a book and pointing at the cover. "They're the same symbols as this smudgy ring here." Sure enough, the brawl with the demons has destroyed most of whatever chalk ring they'd drawn on the floor for their ritual.

Sam thumbs through the book quickly, scanning pages and frowning in concentration. "Uh... So, we should call Bobby. This is in Assyrian glyphs and I think I'm only getting every third or fourth word."

Dean's already dialling the phone, ignoring the part where Sam can somehow understand any Assyrian glyphs. "Hey Bobby? Yeah, Sam's having trouble with one of his picture books."

While Sam talks Bobby through the ritual as laid out by what he can understand in the book, Dean and Ruby check the house for any other demons lurking about in corners, but they don't come up with anything.

"I'm sure he's fine," Ruby says suddenly as they're coming down from the attic. Dean raises an eyebrow quizzically. She elaborates. "Castiel. I bet he's doing fine, wherever he is."

Dean is about to reply to Ruby's strange show of concern for what he might be feeling, but Sam interrupts with a grimace. "I think we can replicate the ritual," Sam says. "But... you're not going to like it." Dean lets out a sharp, bitter laugh. "No," Sam shakes his head. " _Ruby's_ not going to like it. You're going to love it." Dean laughs for real.

\--

"Fucking no."

"You heard the man," Dean says, smiling hard enough that it looks like he's going to pull a muscle. "It's the only way it will work."

"Bullshit." She looks to Sam for some support. "You said Bobby said he was only, like, eighty percent sure it would kill a human. I'm willing to gamble with those odds. Send Dean instead." Ruby glares and crosses her arms across her chest in a very 'no way, Jose' pose.

"You're going," Dean says, turning away from the argument. He starts rearranging the kitchen chairs so they can redraw the circle on the hardwood.

"It shouldn't be that bad," Sam says, touching her arm and lowering his voice. "It'll sap a lot of your strength when we banish you, but it's a physical thing, Bobby says. You won't go back to hell or anything."

"I think you're forgetting that anywhere where I have to stay trapped with His Majesty, The Royal Prince Fluffy-Wings for an unknown amount of time until you and your obnoxious brother come and rescue us like a pair of stray kittens, is a very real definition of 'hell'."

"Wait, what did Dean do? He's not the reason you have to go after Cas."

"He's just way too excited to banish me. That's obnoxious."

Sam can't argue with that. "You're going to be okay," he says instead. "We're going to find you and bring you straight back. Bobby says he knows how to do it, so it'll be fine. You still have the GPS I gave you?" Ruby nods and they share a quiet, lingering kiss.

"Come on," Dean sighs, rolling his eyes. "The faster we get this started, the faster it will be over." He honestly couldn't have jinxed them more unless he was standing under a ladder when he broke a mirror over the black cat that was crossing his path. But they don't know this yet. Really, they're the Winchesters -- they should be able to guess -- but that's just another reason Ruby and Castiel get so frustrated.

Ruby stands in the centre of the circle, Dean lights the appropriate candles and Sam clears his throat. "I don't think you'll feel anything right away," he tells Ruby. "It's going to take away a lot of your, uh..."

"Demon-ness," Dean supplies.

"Right, a lot of your demon-ness," Sam says. He flips a page in the book and gets ready to begin.

"I'm sure it will leave all your bitchiness intact though," Dean assures her.

"See if I come back with your special boy, then, if I'm such a bitch. Maybe I'll eat him," she says, flipping him off.

"I'm starting!" Sam warns them, attempting to stop a scuffle before it starts. "Can I start? Are we ready?"

Ruby nods, glaring once more at Dean until he steps back out of the circle. "Uh... Good luck," he says, just before Sam starts to read from the ritual.

"Bu insanlık dışı dit dra geen yalnız bir adaya göndermek," Sam reads, voice strong and confident, though he has little idea what he's really saying. Dean lights the red candle on his left from the white candle on his right and cross them over each other before setting them on the edge of the circle.

Ruby shifts her weight back and forth. "It's prickly," she complains.

Sam keeps reading. "Ve çok ini dikenakan tidaksihir bir parçasıdır." The candle flames flicker and the room seems to get darker, even though it's barely four thirty and the sun is still shining through the windows.

"Şimdi yakut jest rzucić się eğlenceli kısım başlıyor," Sam finishes, pausing only briefly right by the end when he gets tied up on a smudged word. He takes a deep, steadying breath and looks up to see what is happening.

"The hell?" Ruby grunts, blinking out the blinding light and shielding her eyes. She squints around, trying to make out what's happened to the kitchen and the Winchesters and the ritual circle.

"Mook?" says the little monkey who is sitting on the beach a few feet away. He eats a bug off the sand, cackles to himself, and scampers away.

"Oh, holy shit," says Ruby.

\--

Ruby had followed the monkey because she was at a general loss as to what else to do. Now the monkey is sitting a few feet above her in the lowest branches of a tree while she leans against the base of it, pouring out all her thoughts and feelings for the best monkey-led therapy session she's had in a while.

"I mean, it's not like I'm even that terrible of a person. Okay, so I'm technically a demon. I'm not even the biggest, baddest demon out there. I used to wish I was, just so people would at least remember my name. Did you know my boss called me 'Roxy' for the first two hundred and eighty years? Roxy! I don't need that. And like, now I'm a good guy, or whatever, but do any of them treat me like I am? Sam does. _Sometimes._ At least he knows my name," Ruby sighs and rests her head against the tree trunk.

"I get that I am demon and he's an angel and we can never, ever get along, but I think he's a little harsh on me a lot of the time. And now they expect me to be all heroic and run off into the unknown to save him? Whatever. If this is what it takes to make everyone at least tolerate me, then I guess I can deal with talking to a monkey for a few days until Sam shows up."

"It's not a monkey," Castiel says, suddenly stepping out from behind another tree. "It's a slow loris, from the Lorisidae family. Primates, but not monkeys."

It's to Ruby's credit that she doesn't jump up and scream or throw a handful of sand at him. "What?" she says instead, staring up at him. He looks about the same as he normally would -- same blue tie, same trench coat, same slightly vacant expression.

The monkey -- _the loris,_ Ruby mentally corrects -- stares at Castiel for a moment too , before flinging a handful of tree bark at him and scampering up into the higher branches. Ruby mentally high-fives the loris for the beautiful action.

"Well, you're not a monkey!" Castiel shouts after him. "He's not," he mumbles again, more to himself this time. "No sense in getting bent out of shape about it. Lots of people aren't monkeys."

As Ruby watches him for a few moments, brushing the dirt and bark off his lapel, she realizes it's the first time she's ever heard him really shout. "Are you okay?" she asks carefully.

"Yes," Castiel says, turning back to her. "Well. No. I seem to have lost much of my power."

Ruby stands up and stretches. "I meant about the monkey/not monkey thing. You seem overly invested. But yeah. The spell or the ritual or whatever. It de-powered you before it sent you here. And where is here, exactly? Do you know?"

"It seems to be an island, but that's not important. Where are Dean and Sam? I assume they have a trick for getting us all back to Iowa?"

Even without the smudges on his coat and the extra-ruffled look to his hair, the shouting at the loris-who-is-not-a-monkey would have tipped Ruby off to how well Cas is _not_ adjusting to the island lifestyle. She is not excited to tell him they're pretty much stranded until Sam and Dean decide to show up.

"The boys aren't here. It's just me."

"Oh." Castiel is obviously disappointed. "Are they on their way?"

Ruby pulls out the GPS button Sam gave her the little indicator link blinks on and off like it's supposed to and it's mildly comforting. "They're supposed to be."

"You have no powers either," Castiel says. It's not a question, just a sad statement. Ruby nods glumly. "Well, let's go down to the water so they will know they've reached the right place."

They walk out to the water without speaking. Ruby knows he's stressing out about being stuck with no powers, and Castiel is fairly sure she is blaming him for getting them both into this mess. Neither one of them is wrong.

"It was their stupid plan," Castiel says after a moment of standing quietly and staring out over the endless stretch of blue grey water.

"Sure was."

"I was only doing what they asked of me."

"Those assholes," Ruby agrees as amiably as she can.

"We'll be back soon."

Four hours later, Ruby's legs are getting too tired to keep standing and waiting around for the Winchesters to rescue her. She sits down and stretches them out in front of her instead, groaning when her joints creak and crack.

"We can sit in shifts," Castiel says, like her noisy knees were the only thing cluing him into the fact that she was still there. "That way one of us can be standing so they will see us better. We can expedite our leaving that way."

Ruby rolls her eyes and tugs on the edge of his trench coat. "Sit down, idiot. Wherever we even are, they're not coming to get us. The Impala is great, but she can't sail across oceans. Sam said Bobby has some kind of spell to call us back or something."

Castiel stares at something Ruby doesn't really see for another moment, then sits down heavily. He doesn't say anything. Just when Ruby is starting think they're going to sit in silence until the apocalypse actually happens, he sighs loudly. "I shouldn't have yelled at that loris," he says, avoiding her raised eyebrows. "It's not his fault he's not a monkey."

She bursts out laughing. "Oh wow," she snorts, "you're right. You should go find him and apologize." He nods and starts to stand up and Ruby just laughs harder. "Forget it, I was kidding. You'd be lucky if he didn't bite you or something. Lorises have teeth, right?"

"They must have," Castiel says, thinking for a moment. "They sometimes eat other little animals."

"There you go, don't purposely piss him off then."

"Why would you tell me to apologize if you didn't think I should actually apologize?"

Ruby spends a few minutes trying to explain the concept of 'messing with someone' and 'being sarcastic as a way of life', but Castiel really isn't getting it. She finally gives in. "You know what, I'm sorry. Forget I said it."

He regards her oddly for a moment and then the smallest smile plays across his face. "It's getting dark. Maybe we should go inland and look for somewhere to camp out for the night."

"You were gonna stand on the beach until Sam and Dean showed up in a rowboat, and now you want to set up camp and play Survivorman? Sheesh. I'm not eating any rats," she warns him.

It's only been a few minutes since Castiel rightly pointed out that it was getting darker, but the sun sets rapidly, before they're able to find anything to use as shelter -- no readily available cave, not even a tree with wide branches they can hide under.

Ruby finds a log to lean against and sits down, making sure to spread her leather jacket underneath her to keep the wet from seeping into her jeans. "If we get eaten by a polar bear, I am blaming you forever," she says.

"Why are we stopping here? Shouldn't we find something to shelter under, or near, or, or... beside?"

"These boots have heels. If I fall and break an ankle and you can't magic-angel-fix me, it's not going to be a pleasant few months for anyone."

Castiel nods and sits down on the log, not requiring further explanation regarding any of the new and exciting ways Ruby could be unpleasant if prompted. "Wait, how long do you think we'll have to wait?" he asks, almost sounding worried to Ruby's ears.

"No idea." 

"Well, hopefully before morning then."

"Yeah," Ruby says, closing her eyes. "Hopefully."

\--

The sun rises the next morning, as it is wont to do, and sets off a veritable cacophony of bird calls.

Ruby glares in the general direction of the tree tops but she doesn't see any birds. "Awesome," she grunts to grunts to herself when she realizes she's still in the jungle. "I wonder if there's anything edible around here."

"I was also thinking about food. I believe I might be getting hungry," Castiel says, climbing down from a nearby tree. He drops the last four feet from the lowest branch and lands easily on the uneven ground. His trench coat flaps to a standstill around him and Ruby thinks, not for the first time since they first met, that he reminds her of a giant bird.

Best not to mention that, lest he peck her eyes out. "Uh... What's up there?" she asks, tilting her at the tree.

Castiel looks back up toward the tree, like he needs to think about it. "Leaves, mostly." He starts walking down toward the beach. "Maybe we can catch a fish for breakfast."

Ruby follows him even though she absolutely does not want to eat, let alone attempt to catch, a fish out of the grimy ocean, if the alternative is being left alone where anything can eat her, she'll take the deadpan angel and the slimy fish breakfast.

 _See,_ Ruby thinks as she steps around a deep depression in the earth that absolutely would have broken her ankle the night before. _I just found something I dislike more than him. We're getting along so well._

"I'm not sure how to catch a fish. I don't think I would want to eat one even if we could catch it," Castiel tells her when she reaches the beach. Now that the reality that she may be spending a considerable amount of time stranded on this island, Ruby starts looking around with a little more curiosity. She doesn't know how to catch a fish either, not without a fishing rod or something.

"Do we even know we're on an island? I thought it was an island, but have you like... checked?" Ruby asks. She realizes she's been mentally referring to it as an island without actually having any verification. Maybe they could walk to somewhere with a Taco Bell and not have to worry about fish at all.

Castiel shrugs. "I assume so. We could find out," he says, pulling his eyes away from the water. "You go that way along the beach and I'll go this way. If we meet up again, it's an island."

"Uh, and if we don't? Or if I get eaten by a bear?"

He gives her a strange look. "If you get eaten by a bear it won't matter if it's an island or a slice of pecan pie, will it?"

"I hope you get eaten by a bear, asshole," Ruby mutters, but she turns on her heel and marches off along the beach.

"Wait, no," Castiel calls after her. "No, this is a bad idea." She starts to tell him _duh, of course it's a bad idea, I wasn't kidding, bears will fuck you up,_ but the expression on his face catches her off guard and she closes her mouth with a snap.

Mostly she's shocked that he has an expression to begin with, but that expression is one of genuine worry. "What if the spell requires us to be in close proximity? I don't want it to bring you back and leave me here."

"Yes, how horrible," Ruby grimaces, but she doesn't push him into the ocean when he walks beside her. About twenty yards down the beach, he stops again.

Ruby stops too and rolls her eyes. "We're walking side by side here, Castiel, that should be close enough for any damn spell. I am _not_ holding your hand."

He scoffs and ducks into the underbrush, coming back a few seconds later with a stick. He uses one end to draw a large symbol in the sand, something angelic that makes Ruby's head hurt to look at. "Just so we know where we started," he says, when she gives him a dirty look.

"Fine," she mutters. They walk on in silence. "What did that symbol mean?" she asks finally, curiosity finally overcoming her dislike for prolonging conversations with the angel.

"It says 'go away, bears'. Better safe than sorry."

Ruby watches him from the corner of her eye, wondering if he's joking or not. She's not even sure if he's capable of joking. "So, why did it make the inside of my eyes itch so much?"

"Are you part bear?" Ruby notes a faint trace of pure, unbridled terror in his voice.

"No."

"Then probably because you're a dirty, unclean demon."

Ruby stops talking to him then and speeds up just enough to keep him out of her peripheral vision. Without his powers, she's barely even worried about him being behind her. Maybe his warning would go unheeded and a bear would maul his jerky, condescending, lagging-behind ass.

An hour and half later, they're still walking and food is becoming an absolute necessity. So far, all they've seen is a long, gently curving stretch of sandy beach with the dark ocean on one side and the solid line of dense undergrowth and tall trees on the other. And there's not a goddamn Taco Bell in sight. "I'm hungry," Ruby says, slowing down so Castiel catches up.

"Hunger... It's like a small animal in your abdomen, running on a wheel and the wheel is squeaking." Ruby shakes her head and starts walking away, toward the trees, hoping for some berries or a coconut tree or whatever the hell is on deserted islands besides crazy dudes with crazier hair, but he catches her arm. "That's what it feels like, isn't it?"

She yanks her arm from his grasp and smoothes out her jacket gently like he damaged it. "I don't know, it's not a thing you describe it's just a feeling. You feel it."

"I don't," Castiel says quietly.

"Oh. Right. Then yeah, I guess that's 'hunger.' People say sometimes it gnaws, too."

He does the little, owl-like head tilt Ruby has come to call 'angel face' and then nods. "Yes, I might say that."

"So, what do you want to eat?" she asks, attempting to ignore how distressed he seems.

He blinks at her. "Well... What's good?"

Ruby groans and closes her eyes to better. "Oh, what isn't good? French fries are good. _So_ good. And French toast. And French bread. French toast make from French bread. Anything French, really."

"Qu'en est-il une noix de coco?"

Ruby opens her eyes to a coconut hovering a quarter of an inch away from her nose. "What the hell?" she yelps, jumping back. Castiel is holding up the coconut and not frowning, which for him is basically beaming.

"I said 'what about a coconut?' Tu as dit que tu aimes choses qui sont français, oui?"

She takes the coconut from him and eyes it carefully. "Are you speaking in French? I don't know what you're saying, so knock it off."

"Je m'excuse."

She gives him a dirty look. "Stop, I said."

Castiel shrugs and goes back to starting at the coconut. "They are apparently quite nutritious. How do we eat it?"

"We can't eat the barky shell part. The water or whatever is inside. We have to poke a hole in it or something and... oh shit. Dean has my knife." Ruby glares at the coconut like she wants it to burst into flames. She does and it doesn't. "I'm going to starve to death because that idiot thinks I'm going to stab him while he sleeps." She briefly considers drop-kicking the coconut back into the jungle, but with her luck this week, it would hit a bear and the trouble would really start.

"Here," Castiel says, taking the coconut and pulling a long, silver knife from the depths of his ruffled trench coat.

"Uh. How long have you had that?"

"How long has the grass grown green from the hillsides?"

Ruby sighs when he answers her question with a question, one of her biggest pet peeves, but he shakes his head.

"That's not rhetorical. I really don't remember."

"Uh... Forever?" she shrugs.

"No, no," Castiel shakes his head again. "I distinctly remember an experiment with red grass. That was right before the green. The red was such a nightmare that afterwards, we all agreed on the green right away. I got this sword the day after."

Again, her curiosity overrides her distaste. "Why was the red so horrible?"

A tiny smile flits across his face while he works the sword point into one of the indents on the coconut. "We kept losing the zebras."

"Zebras... Black and white stripe horse type looking things?"

Castiel shrugs and starts on another indent. "Well, they are now. Oh, here it goes." He holds the coconut out to Ruby and nods for her to take it. 

She takes it, unsure exactly why he's still staring at her like she might explode at any moment. Steeling her nerves against the unknown, she puts to coconut to her mouth and knocks back a mouthful of the water.

If Ruby is expecting something awful, like a mouthful of poison or scorpions, it never comes. The coconut water is a little bland, but a little sweet, and it's the first thing she has put in her body in almost a day, so on that fact alone, it's practically amazing.

"Not bad," she says finally. Castiel smiles like he invented the damn thing instead of just poking his sword into it. Kind of like the look a lot of guys get on their face after sex. She snorts back a laugh and decides to behave and not mention the similarity aloud. Especially because after the grass and zebra stories, she's not entirely sure he didn't invent coconuts.

He stashes the sword somewhere back in the inside of his coat. "There were a few more. Let me get them so we at least have some food."

While he's gone, Ruby manages to crack the coconut in half, spilling the rest of the liquid down her front, but freeing the meaty parts. Coconut isn't her favourite, but when she starts to think that, she instead thinks about the slimy squids she might have to eat later on and the coconut tastes better right away.

"J'ai retourné victorieux," Castiel says, rolling his Rs just enough to make Ruby fight back the urge to laugh again. Her face must contort awkwardly, because Castiel stops in his tracks and glances down at the coconuts he's carrying. "What?"

"Nothing, no. I'm glad you found them."

He smiles fondly at his treasure. "I am too. Now we have coconuts. A lovely bunch of coconuts."

Ruby can't help laughing at that.

"What?" he says again, familiar exasperation creeping into his voice.

"You've never heard that song?" he gives her such a bemused look that she laughs again. "I don't know, it's about coconuts or something. It's a song."

Castiel elects to ignore her outburst and opens another coconut. He stares at it in his hands as they walk.

"Are you going to do something with it, or are you just memorizing it?" Ruby finally asks. The beach seems to stretch on forever and she's kicking the sand in frustration with every step, and Castiel's staring contest with the coconut is, very unfortunately, the most interesting thing for literal miles.

"I have never eaten before," Castiel says, tearing his eyes from the coconut and fixing her with his unflinching stare. 

"I'm sorry," she says, feeling extra awkward. It isn't an accusation; it can't be. But something about having an angel, even an angel without any angel powers, stare right at you while he's talking always feels like an accusation. "Coconut isn't really a mind-blowing first meal. When we get back to civilization, we'll get you a bacon cheeseburger. With fries."

"When we get back to civilization, I'll have my power back," he reminds her. "I won't need to eat."

"Oh."

He tries to drink from the coconut, but whatever he doesn't spill, he nearly chokes on instead. Ruby picks a piece of the white meat from the inside of her coconut and hands it to him. "Try this. If you start choking, no power in Hell or Heaven is going to make me give you mouth to mouth."

He inspects it closely and then puts it in his mouth. Ruby waits, breath held, to see if it will kill him, but he chews it and swallows it without keeling over.

"Strange," he finally says. "I hope we won't be here for long."

It's pretty hard to tell with Castiel, Ruby knows, but he seems shaken. She sort of gets why he is, too, because he's spent literally the whole of creation doing one thing and he's suddenly supposed to doing something completely different just because Sam and Dean's plans once again failed miserably. Ruby wants to say something, to reassure him that she'll help his get some good old fashion ass-kicking revenge on the Winchesters for putting him through this. Not because her and Castiel are friends, because they're not, but he just seems so miserable that Ruby would feel like an ass if she didn't say something.

All of the sudden, she gets that familiar, tense pressure feeling behind her eyes again and she sees they're standing a few feet away from Castiel's 'no bears' symbol.

"So, it is an island. We're on an island. And until Sam and Dean figure out how to get us back, we're stuck here." Ruby sighs. "Great."

"It's not really great," Castiel frowns.

"I was being sarcastic."

"Oh, well. Still. It's not great."

"I said I know, shut up." Ruby says, turning away and wondering why she tried to comfort him about anything.

\--

They bicker for the better part of six hours through the course of the afternoon about what kind of shelter they should build and where they should build it.

Ruby thinks they should head inland and try to find higher ground, maybe a cave or something to shelter if it starts to rain or if something comes by and wants to eat them, but Castiel thinks they should stay close to the beach, out in the open, maybe under some trees, where they will be able to keep an eye on things.

"Your problem is that you're too much of a demon," Castiel says, pulling a large branch from the tangled underbrush of the tree line and hauling it toward the middle of the beach.

"If by 'my problem' you mean 'the reason you're awesome, Ruby', then yeah, being a demon is so that."

"No, I meant it was a problem you have. A big one," he corrects. "You're so afraid something is going to try and kill us because that's what a demon would do."

Ruby points to his big 'no bears allowed' sign, or whatever it's supposed to say, with one eyebrow raised.

"Well that's just common sense," he mutters. "Have you ever tried to speak reasonably with a bear?"

Ruby chooses to ignore his obvious fear of bears and instead just files that information away for a later, more useful moment. "I'm not too much of a demon," she says. "It's that you're too much of an angel."

"I am not. I am exactly as much of an angel as the Lord, my Father, intended me to be."

"Wow, really, pulling the God card? Oh, how I wish I could say I was shocked. That's a tired, worn out excuse, man."

If Castiel was really human instead of just being a powerless angel, and had gone to kindergarten instead of just possessing some unassuming, scrawny white dude, the look he gave her then would have been accompanied by him sticking out his tongue and him saying 'no, my dad could beat up your dad!'

"You can't be shocked, you have no sense of wonder. Just bitterness and more than a lifetime of being old and jaded."

Ruby stares at him, open mouthed, for a few seconds before she can collect herself enough to threaten him with bodily harm. "I'm sorry, Bird Boy, did you just call me _old_? Because if you even want to live to see your precious Deanykins again, you better be damn sure you did not just call me old."

Castiel just walks away like he can't hear her and digs his wingtip shoes into the beach. He kicks some sand out before trying to get the branch he's holding to stand upright in the hole. It flops over onto the ground. Castiel stares imploringly at it. The staring doesn't help.

Ruby stands twenty feet away and watches him miserably try to build some sort of whatever it is he's trying to build with bits of trees and sand. A few times it looks like he's trying to set it on fire with his mind, but none of the branches so much as smokes.

"Fine," he says irritably, nudging the fallen branches with his foot. "I'm anxious to see how well your little plan works out then." Ruby turns on her heel and stalks off into the trees, pushing branches out of her way and purposely letting them snap back when she knows Castiel is right behind her. She's hoping one of them takes his head clean off his stupid shoulders, but once again Fate laughs in her face. It's becoming an unwelcome common theme.

They walk in as straight a line as they can manage, not speaking at all. Ruby can feel his eyes boring into the back of her neck, but she ignores him. In the dense jungle, it's hard to see the sun and there's hardly any air circulation. Ruby's sweating inside her leather jacket and her boots, while totally fashionable and great for walking around small town America or kicking people in their faces, are not suitable for hiking. She's beginning to really regret her idea, but she obviously can't say that.

There's the occasional bird call and the chittering of something that could be monkeys ( _maybe more lorises,_ she thinks), but not a cave in sight. Not even a volcano or a mountain in the middle of the jungle, which Ruby thought was a prerequisite for any island people got stranded on. She steps over a little stream, barely wider than her arm, but then stops and turns back. Castiel stops, too, even though she didn't ask him too, and they both crouch to examine the water.

"Do you think we can drink it?" Castiel finally asks.

Ruby feels momentarily victorious for winning the 'I'm not speaking to you' contest. "Maybe. You should try it, and then if you die, I'll know not to drink it."

"Oh yeah? Maybe you should..." he struggles for a moment, not adept at any sort of banter. "Shut your mouth hole."

Ruby starts a slow clap for that beautiful retort, but he flicks his hand in the universal 'quiet' motion, and points to a bird bathing in the stream a few feet away. "It's a Jambu fruit dove," he whispers. "That means there's probably fruit somewhere nearby. And that the water's good to drink."

"How do you even know that? It was just a bird," Ruby asks, once the bird has flown off.

"I know all of my Father's creatures," he said offhandedly. He dips his hand in the stream and licks the water off like a cat would have.

"Ew."

"It's not bad, actually. Coldish."

"Not what I was talking about," she mutters, but she takes a sip from her own cupped hands. They fill one of the empty coconuts with water and keep walking. Twenty minutes later, they're standing on the beach again.

"This stupid island," Ruby hisses. "Every deserted island is supposed to have caves and shit."

Castiel looks around for a moment, as if weighing his options very closely. "I guess we should compromise. That was the fourth tenet of The Agreement, wasn't it?"

"Yeah compromise," Ruby sighs. "That way no one will be happy." Of course, as long as he is as miserable as she is, maybe it wouldn't be so bad. If he's more miserable, that would be good.

The set up their camp right on the edge of the tree line. Two separate little shanties so they don't have to look at each other. Operation Terrible Neighbour, Ruby calls it, and she doesn't answer when Castiel asks which of them is supposed to be the terrible neighbour. _Both of us, probably,_ Ruby thinks.

 _If I had a boom box, I would play loud 80s hair metal all night and drive him out._ Then she thinks about how much that sounds like something Dean would do, and feels annoyed. For all the nasty things she can and has said about Dean Winchester on many separate occasions, she did admire his cassette tape collection more than once.

Castiel makes his little fort closer to the water, while Ruby sets hers back a little further into the jungle, just enough that the low hanging trees provide a roof for the walls she's built up. Castiel makes his hut in a bit of an A frame, leaning two sets of branches against each other at the top, a precarious looking affair that slips on the sand and falls down twice while Ruby is lounging in her shady shelter. She smirks to herself, but doesn't offer to help, because how else will he learn?

\--

On the third evening of Operation Terrible Neighbour, right before sunset, Ruby finally gets a fire going.

She grins appreciatively and makes a bit of noise in celebration, and Castiel pokes his head out of his (finally stable) hut and glares. "Do you mind? I'm trying to be productive over here."

"Productive? Bitch, I just made _fire!_ "

"Congratulations," he says. Ruby silently curses Dean for teaching him to force so much sarcasm into one word. "Now we can heat up our coconuts and water. What do you think coconut soup would taste like?"

"Okay, I get it, you think I've wasted my time."

"No, really," Castiel says, crawling out of his hut and brushing the sand off his grungy blue dress slacks when he stands. The grease of nearly-five days on the island is making his already messy hair look like a human rights violation and his trench coat is filthy, yet he refuses to take it off. _Trench coat shaped security blanket,_ Ruby thinks. With the big blue eyes and the hard edge to his voice, she has no problem believing that he's completely lost his mind. "Do you think it will bring out the coconut flavour more? Because I just cannot get enough of that coconut flavour."

"Chill, man," she says, holding up her hands defensively. "I just think it's cool that we have fire now, okay? Celebrate the little victories and all that. We're going to go crazy if we just hang around and think about all the stuff that sucks here."

"It's been five days," Castiel says, glaring at her fire. "Five days. You said they had a spell to bring us right back. Five days is not _right back_. Five days is about four days and twenty-three and a half hours longer than _right back._ "

Ruby jams another stick at the base of the flames and watches it crackle away. "I know. You think I'm thrilled to be here? We just have to tough it out."

Castiel crawls back into his shelter without another word and he doesn't come out when Ruby offers him some roasted coconut a few hours later.

She sits alone at the fire, staring into it like it might provide an answer as to why or how things got so messed up as to leave her stranded on this stupid island. The fire provides a nice glow and some warmth, but very few answers. She sheds out of her jacket when it gets too warm, but doesn't move away from the fire. She knows on some level she's clinging to it (not literally -- that would hurt) because it's symbolic of her struggle and it's a comforting reminder of civilization and home and all that.

"It's really fucking sad that I can actually count bad take-out food, shitty motels and the Winchesters as my home now," she says aloud to the fire and whatever else is listening. "Very sad indeed." She tries not to 

The next morning, Ruby hears the bird calls in the jungle around her. Lying with her jacket as a pillow on her bed of rushes and the damp, earthy smells around her, she almost believes she's still dreaming. She hangs onto that feeling, imagines Sam lying with her, maybe a hot fudge sundae with extra whipped cream perched daintily on his chest, because hey, dream big or don't bother.

Very unfortunately, just as dream-Ruby is about to take her first big bite (what exactly she wants to bite, she hasn't decided yet), Castiel starts shouting her name.

"And now I'll for real never get a boner again," real-Ruby sighs to herself as dream-Sam and the dream-sundae snap away instantly. She shimmies out of her hut and looks around, wondering if maybe he's being eaten by bear, but what she sees is a bit more shocking. The tan trench coat she's come to loathe over the last few months is draped over the roof of his hut along with the suit jacket. Castiel himself is standing knee-deep in the water, sleeves rolled up and soaked right through, shouting gleefully about a fish.

"Oh my God, you actually caught one?" Ruby's never been a big fan of fish, but the prospect of eating something that isn't coconut or the occasional bug is making her think about doing crazy things, like maybe patting the crazy man on the shoulder and saying 'nice work, asshat'. She runs down to the water's edge and can't hold back her grin.

"Don't take my Father's name in vain, s'il vous plait," he says, without missing a beat. "And yes, oui, I did." Ruby almost splashes out a few steps to congratulate him, but then he holds his fish up.

It's a rock. It's not even a fish shaped rock. It's just a big, round rock.

"I hate you," she says.

Later, much later when she's calmer and less likely to strangle him with his ugly tie, she expounds quite clearly all the reasons and ways in which she hates him, using every colourful expletives she can think of even a few she's never thought of before and shocks herself with. Castiel sits with his toes almost in the fire and looks forlornly at the rock Ruby insisted he bring back out of the water with him and keep as a reminder of how stupid he is.

"I really thought it was a fish," he says quietly when Ruby hits a mental roadblock for synonyms of the words 'unendingly stupid'. "It felt like a fish. Alive and scaly and wriggling. I knew it was a fish."

"But it's a rock," she sighs for the eighteenth time. "A rock I want to brain you with."

"I don't know what's wrong with me."

"Really?" Ruby says, laughing meanly. "After I just spent forty minutes telling you?"

"We need to get off this island," Castiel says, picking up the rock again and turning it around in his hands.

"I know."

"I hallucinated a fish."

"I know. Idiot."

They go to bed, because it's getting dark and the bugs come out worse at night and the only thing to really do is to sit up and eat more fucking coconut. Castiel takes the not-a-fish rock with him and neither of them says good night to the other because politeness is hard when you've spent all day despising the other person for just being themself.

It starts raining just as Ruby is drifting off to sleep, and at first the sound is nice. Soothing, even. But the wind picks up after a while, and the sound of it whistling through the trees puts bad dreams in her head. Then a particularly strong gust of wind rips a branch from the tree next to her shelter right off the trunk and smashes it through her well-balanced roof. Gallons of cold rain pour down over her, and she's shrieking and spluttering and soaked to the skin within seconds.

"What's going on?" she hears Castiel call to her over the sound of the wind and her own coughing.

"My shelter!" she calls back. "It's ruined!" Ruby looks around when she gets her head free from the tangled wreckage of her hut. Despite all the trouble he had getting it built, his shelter is holding strong against the wind. "Fuck, fuck, damn." Ruby feels like crying.

The slightest tips of disheveled hair is visible from the opening. "Get in here before you get blown away," the voice attached to the hair commands.

Ruby wriggles into Castiel's hut and it's warm and dry and much roomier than she thought it would be. "You're drenched and you smell like wet dog," he tells her, looking critically through sleepy eyes.

"Yeah, well, you look like Charles Manson's insurance broker," she shoots back, lying down and turning her back to him.

"Here," he says after a few minutes of stony silence. "You don't have your normal regenerative power. Don't get pneumonia and die." Castiel nudges her elbow gently and then his trench coat is draped over her like a smelly blanket with too many pockets.

Ruby pretends to be asleep because she can't find the words to thank him and thinks she might choke on them out of shock if she did.

\--

The next morning, they survey the damage. Ruby's hut is a complete wreck. She pulls the tatters of her jacket from under some leaves and nearly cries. "Fucking unfair," she says, voice not-quite-but-almost cracking. "Just unfair."

"I'm, um... Going to go find something for breakfast." By 'something', they both know he means 'coconuts', but he doesn't say that and Ruby is aware how kind he's being. He leaves her alone to mourn for her favourite piece of outerwear.

"A tree fell down," he says over their light breakfast of warm coconut and stream water.

"Wow, we had a big wind storm last night and a tree fell down. Too bad the Professor hasn't been able to make a printing press out of all these coconuts, 'cause that sounds like a front page story, Cassie."

"You would be Gilligan," he says, popping another piece of coconut in his mouth. When he'd done chewing and she's still staring at him in disbelief, he shrugs. "Dean likes reruns."

"I would not be Gilligan."

"Well, you're not Mary-Anne."

While Ruby sits and mulls over how that's a bad thing, Castiel sets aside the rest of his coconut and stands up. "A tree fell down and I think it would make a good boat."

She goggles at him. "A boat, are you serious? We don't even know where we are, let alone how to get back to the States."

"It's been, what?" Castiel thinks for a moment. "A week almost? We have to face the very real fact that the Winchesters... They're very nice boys, but..."

"But if we're relying on their smarts, we're very probably going to die on this island," Ruby finishes. "Yeah. You're right." It hurts her just a little to admit it. "Show me this tree."

It's a tree, Ruby thinks when she sees it. It didn't fall any specific way that would indicate masts or a rudder. She doesn't see how it was supposedly a good boat. It just looks like a big hunk of wood. "I don't see it," she tells him.

He shrugs. "Well, I do. Let's drag it back to camp."

Ruby laughs, laughs a lot harder than she would have thought she'd be able to, given the circumstances. "Not a chance in Hell I am dragging a giant-ass log across an island so you can bitch for three days because Noah never taught you to build a proper boat. You're on your own this time, Wings." 

She turns and walks away, feeling good about shooting down his idea. It's _is_ a stupid idea, after all. The ocean is filled with terrible things that want to eat them or worse, and she did rightly point out they have no clue where they are to even be sailing from. Better to stay put and wait for the spell to kick in. Ruby can think of at least thirty reasons it's a bad idea before she ever gets to 'and I'm terrified of boats.' She heads back to their spot on the beach, and starts rebuilding her ruined hut.

Three hours later, Ruby's attempt at a new shelter is crackling merrily on the fire and she's wishing like crazy one of the empty coconut shells had some exotically named rum drink in it.

She's been watching Castiel struggle in his attempt to drag the fallen tree closer for the better part of the afternoon but she wasn't about to help because entertainment on the island up until this point had been limited to the morning before last when a dragon-shaped piece of driftwood washed up. She named him Pokey and he became the camp mascot.

"Hey there, how are you? Having a nice afternoon?" Ruby asks, smiling mildly.

Castiel glares. "It was lovely. Yours?" He looks pointedly at the non-hut she's built.

"Shut up," she says, prodding at the fire with a long stick. "Shut up or I won't let you have any of my awesome lunch."

"Toasted coconut?"

She rolls her eyes. "And water."

"Sorry to have sold it short." Castiel gives the tree one last look, then sits down on his folded trench coat. "Thanks," he mutters when Ruby hands him one of the hollowed out, half coconut shells they've been using as plates.

Off the island, Ruby sticks to Sam and Castiel talks to Dean, and if they never have to interact, the better for everyone. But here they don't have a choice. It's tentative, and mostly something they were forced into, but it's definitely an alliance, Ruby thinks. A coconut-based alliance.

They don't really speak unless they have to, and more often than not it's sarcastic, but they're working together to stay alive. "Ugh," she sighs out loud without thinking.

"I know," Castiel sighs back. He pokes the coconut in his hand. "I don't know very much about eating or food, but there must be something else to it?"

With all of the time they've spent traipsing through the jungle to look for more coconut trees or to fetch water, they haven't seen so much as a berry bush lying around. Coconuts seem to be the only thing on the island that grows in the open. Ruby thinks there must be a secret hidden grove of actual food somewhere on this stupid island. She's still holding out for a Taco Bell.

"But... The fruit doves we hear singing and stuff. They eat fruit right?" Ruby asks. She feels like it's a stupid question, but she doesn't know for sure.

"They do. And the loris you befriended. They eat small animals and fruit and eggs and the like. There has to be much richer ecosystem than we've given credit for." Castiel drops his coconut into the fire and brushes his dirty hands on his even dirtier pants. "Let's go find it because coconuts are awful."

Ruby considers asking whether all angels had the same excellent attention spans or if he was just special, but she figures if it gets her a chance for some actual food and distracts him from his crazy boat plan, then she'll go with it. "Alright, maybe we can catch one of those fruit birds. I bet they taste pretty good."

Castiel gives her a disgusted look. "The dove is a symbol of peace. We're not going to eat peace." He stands and offers her his hand. She gets to her feet without taking it and starts walking toward the trees. There's a slight noise from behind her, like Castiel is going to say something, but he doesn't follow his sigh up with anything. Ruby smiles triumphantly to herself. _Ultimate win_.

They backtrack along the stream they've been getting their water from, Castiel on one side and Ruby on the other. They look high and low for any animal or bird who might be able to lead them to a food source that isn't a coconut.

Early on, they spot another fruit dove, but after four minutes of crashing through the underbrush to follow it, it leads them to a grove of coconut trees. They head back to the stream, passing at least a dozen more coconut trees. Ruby glares at each one as they pass. Like lorises not being monkeys, it's not the coconut trees' fault that they can only grow coconuts and not something actually delicious, like a Spicy Chicken Gordita or Nachos Bell Grande.

To make her cravings for real food worse, the next two birds lead them to coconut trees as well.

"I think that's the same bird," Ruby says, pointing menacingly at the bird in question. "He's just fucking mocking us now. Can we please just eat him?"

Castiel is watching the bird intently. "I think you may be right... Look, see how this bird has a scar up its belly? Look for that next time."

They wait for what seems like hours, crouched behind some bushes along the bank of the stream for another animal to pass by, but this time it's not one of the brightly coloured fruit doves. It's a little black bird who spots them after a moment. It cocks it head one way and then the other, and Ruby has to clamp a hand over her mouth when Castiel returns the head tilt. The resemblance is uncanny.

"Why isn't it flying off to find fruit?" Ruby stage whispers.

"It's a drongo," Castiel whispers back. "It only eats bugs."

Much to her sorrow and self-loathing, she's already tried eating bugs. They 're not tasty or filling. "God dammit," she says, a bit louder than a stage whisper. Her voice startles the bird and it flies at her face. She lets out a yelp which she will argue to the day she is pecked to death by weird rainforest birds was not a scream and tries to hit the ground. Unfortunately, Ruby is right on the edge of the stream and she topples backwards into it. The little black bird dive bombs her a few times, as if making its point, then flies off.

Castiel watches impassively as she struggles to stand.

"Were you planning to help me?" Ruby splutters, trying to shake water from her hair.

"You took my Father's name in vain again. Besides, if I offer to help, you ignore me. If I don't offer to help, you get upset. Tell me how I'm supposed to win here."

Ruby isn't in any mood to play nice. "Read my mind next time, okay? And you know what else?" She never gets to say _what else_ because there's a fat fruit dove on a branch a few feet above them and it's about to fly away.

It flies to the closest grove of coconut trees.

Ruby curses a blue streak up one side of the jungle and down the other, while Castiel stands in amongst the trees and weathers her verbal storm. Only maybe a quarter of it is directed at him anyways. Most of it is for the fruit doves. "Wait!" she says, grabbing his arm. "Look at the scar on that stupid thing!" It is the same bird that's led them to the coconuts twice before.

"Can we eat that fucker now?" Ruby asks.

"One condition," Castiel says, holding out one hand in the traditional 'hold your horses' fashion. Damn him and his imaginary 'condition' horses.

Ruby rolls her eyes so hard she worries for a brief second that they might come loose. "I hate you."

"I know. I want you to stop taking my Father's name in vain."

"Deal, let's kill that son of a bitch."

\--

In the end, it's an expertly slung rock that takes the bird down. Castiel closes his eyes for a moment, presumably praying, while Ruby does her best Labrador Retriever impersonation and runs into the brush to find it. When she gets back, grinning like a kid on Christmas with the lifeless bird corpse in her hands, Castiel is in a decidedly less festive mood.

"What?" Ruby asks. "We got the little jerk."

"Yes, precisely," Castiel says darkly. He doesn't look at her or what she's holding. "Can we go now please?"

"Wow," Ruby says quietly. She follows along behind him with the bird and the extra coconuts they'd filled with water. "You're really not okay with this, are you? Don't you kill demons and stuff all the time?"

"Demons are a plague on God's creation. That bird was innocent."

Ruby takes a deep breath and counts to five in her head to avoid snapping about the plague comment. When that doesn't really help, she tries counting onwards to ten. That doesn't help either.

By the time she feels comfortable enough speaking to him without either verbally or physically taking his head off, she's counted up to five hundred and forty five and they're back at camp.

"You know that sometimes some things have to die so other things can live, right?" she says.

Castiel glares and takes a swig from a coconut of water. "Yes, Rafiki, I understand the circle of life. Who do you think invented the damn thing?"

Ruby's not sure who she hates more at that point -- Dean, for teaching the angel so much sarcasm, Sam, for watching The Lion King with him, or Castiel, for being a stupid angel-face. "I hate everything," she says for good measure.

Castiel rolls his eyes at her and opens his mouth to say something that Ruby can only presume will end with him calling her Pumba and proclaiming he invented the telegraph, and she doesn't have the energy to hear it. She gives him a face full of water from the coconut in her hand instead.

\--

They find fruit after all when they have to go back into the jungle for more water.

"See," Ruby says brightly when they get back to camp the second time. "I basically did us both a giant favour by --"

"Wasting all our water?" Castiel's dry tone is in stark contrast to the still-very-wet of his lapels.

She continues pulling feathers from the dead bird. "I prefer the term 'alternately relocating our water,'" she says.

Castiel mutters something under his breath and moves his wet self closer to the fire.

One of the fruits is a vaguely orange, kind of tennis ball-looking thing that Castiel calls a _sapodilla_ , and then a green spiky thing that smells absolutely raunchy. Ruby pokes at the spiky thing again while turning the plucked bird cooking on the stick over the fire in her other hand.

"Stop it," Castiel tells her again. "I swear it's safe to eat. It smells bad, but it tastes better. It's called durian and people all over the world enjoy it."

She points to the orange one. "And that one?"

"We can eat the sapodilla in the morning, maybe. It needs time off the tree to ripen."

Ruby turns back to the dove over the fire. "What's this going to taste like?"

Castiel shrugs and tries not to look at the cooking meat. "You're the one who eats, not me."

"Everything tastes like chicken. I bet it will taste like chicken."

They let the bird cook the rest of the way in silence and when it's done, it disappears faster than Ruby thought it would. There isn't a lot of meat on a fruit dove, it turns out, but the meat that was there cooked up crispy and only the slightest bit dry. They split open some of the strong smelling durian fruit and Ruby is a little shocked to find she doesn't hate it. Not in her top five favourite fruits, mind you, but definitely better than more motherfucking coconut.

"Uh..." Ruby starts. She's not quite sure how to go about saying more. Her eyes are getting heavy and the stars are starting to come out in the night sky. And the very last of her hut was burning away under the remains of their dinner. The stars were pretty, she'll admit, but she doesn't want to sleep under them. Stupid Castiel and his stupid contagious fear of bears.

"Rebuilding your shelter did not go well, I take it?" he asks.

She shakes her head.

"You want to share mine."

It's not a question, so Ruby doesn't answer. She thinks having to answer would actually kill her stone dead anyways. Damn him again, for the millionth time, but he's done her a favour.

"Fine, but on one condition."

"...What's that?" She really, really doesn't want to know. She is not a fan of his conditions.

"The condition is you now owe me a favour, redeemable by me, at a time and place of my choosing for a task of my choosing."

"What? I --"

"I believe the term is 'extortion'." Castiel looks like the cat who caught the Jambu fruit dove instead of like any kind of angel the kid's stories talked about.

"Yeah," she sighs, "That's what that is all right."

\--

The inside of the hut smells like durian fruit and wet feathers, which is unpleasant but not unbearably so. It's especially not unbearable when she thinks of her other option of sleeping out in the open which they are still not sure is one hundred percent bear-free. They haven't seen any, but that could be because Castiel carves his little 'no bears allowed' symbol on everything he can get his knife near. _His attachment to that knife is actually a little creepy,_ Ruby thinks. _Almost Winchester-esque._

"Good night," Castiel mutters.

"'Night," she whispers. Ruby drifts into a vaguely uncomfortable sleep. Something about sharing such close quarters with an angel is just plain weird. She feels it in her skin, in her bones, in her organs. Pins and needles and the slightest queasiness. She drifts off thinking about how weird of a word 'queasiness' is.

Ruby's sleeping, so she doesn't know how much time passes before she wakes up again, but it's still dark. She hears a strange noise from outside the hut and when she turns to shake Castiel, to send him out first as a bear shield, he's gone.

"Castiel?"

She wraps her hand around the hilt of the magic angel sword and wriggles out of the hut. Castiel is a few feet away, puking his guts out into the sand.

"Ohhh," Ruby groans. She has never dealt well with vomit. Other bodily fluids, okay, but... _ewwww, vomit._ She approaches him carefully and crouches down. "Hey man, are you okay?"

Either through good luck or sheer force of will, he stops throwing up long enough to give her a withering glare. "Peachy," he mumbles. 

Ruby sits with him through another round of retching until he collapses on the sand. Luckily, he collapses away from the vomit, because sick or not, she would have held him under the water until she thought he was clean. When she gets a whiff of him, she thinks she might do that anyway. "Better?" she asks.

He opens one eye, just a slit. "No." Castiel's voice is rough and raw. "I want to die now, please."

"Sorry, slugger," she says, fully aware that 'slugger' is the most condescending nickname in the history of the universe.

Castiel wipes his mouth on the sleeve of his blue jacket, which is quickly becoming as tattered and shabby as his trench coat, then coughs awkwardly when he suddenly has a mouthful of sand.

"I hate this place," he says, sitting up slowly. "I love all of Creation, but I hate this place. And I hate sand. I hate coconuts too. And vomiting. That was vomiting, right?"

Castiel looks genuinely distraught that he hates something and Ruby really wants to make a snotty comment, but she nods instead because some tiny part of her feels bad.

"I wasn't sure if it was vomiting or if God was punishing me for lying with a demon by pulling my digestive tract inside out and backwards with a hook made of burning acid." He flops bonelessly back onto the sand and scowls up at the stars.

As pretty as that imagery is, Ruby barely hears it. "What? No. No, no. Oh ew, sweet fuck, no. You absolutely cannot say that. We. Did not. Lie together. No."

"Not exactly in the way --"

She cuts him off with a sharp glare and a pointed finger. "Not in any way. Not at all. Not ever. No."

He looks up at her, looking mournfully and vaguely crusty.

"You're disgusting," Ruby tells him, but there's very little venom to it.

"I know. Plus, I think I'm a vegetarian now. Will Dean make fun of me?"

"Probably. Come on, Cas," she says, shaking her head as if he's ridiculous as an excuse to hide her smile. "Let's get you cleaned up and then you can sleep it off."

He is in the process of hauling himself to his feet when he stops and turns very slowly to stare, open mouthed.

Ruby realizes her horrible, awful, _familiar_ mistake a split second later and because she can't think of any way in which she can get out of this with grace and poise by using her words, she gives the angel a death glare instead. "Go to sleep. I'm going to stay out here and... not sleep."

"Did you just call me --"

"No. Go away forever. Never come back."

Castiel watches her closely for another moment and then shrugs and slinks back into the shelter. "Good night," he calls out.

"I hate you," Ruby grumbles back. She's not sure why she sounds like she's trying to convince them both it's true.

\--

When Castiel wakes up the next morning and slides out into the sunshine, Ruby is nowhere to be found. He wonders idly if she's drowned herself over last night's faux pas, or if maybe there was a very quiet bear attack while he was asleep, but then she comes tromping across the beach and drops a big load of sticks next to the fallen tree he dragged back the day before.

"Come on," she says, pointing to the tree. "Let's make a freakin' boat."

Castiel picks up a stick and starts scratching out his plans for a boat in the sand. "I've never built a boat before," he tells Ruby in a confidential tone. "But I watched it being done once, and I think I understand the basic principles."

The boat he draws is simple, almost like a canoe or something, and Ruby rolls her eyes because she knows he had to shrink his idea down because they weren't bringing two of every animal with them. She almost feels like telling him to get a new schtick because the holy angel thing is grating as hell on her nerves.

"This is going to be awful, isn't it?" Ruby is referring to not just having to build a boat from scratch, but also the act of sailing it and navigating it safely across the terror-infested ocean.

Castiel squints at the sand drawing. "I think it'll be lovely. A little cramped maybe, but we should have room for food."

"Yeah, yeah." Ruby loathes herself for what she has to say next, but she's never even seen a person building a boat, so she is really out of her element. "Just tell me what to do."

\--

They stop when the sun starts going down and they're both a little shocked to realize they've been working all day. There's a family of six or seven of the little not-monkey lorises sitting right at the tree line, watching with rapt attention. They been there for about three hours and Ruby was starting to get really irritated. They just had such big eyes! It was like being stalked by a Disney baby.

"Food," Ruby says, dropping the knife she's holding in the sand and wandering over to the fire. Castiel joins her a few moments later, wiping the knife she dropped on his pants.

"If that's one of the only knives we have, you should keep better care of it."

"These are the only fingernails I have," she complains. "And now they're ruined with tree bark and shit. Why did we have to peel all the bark off anyways?" Ruby suspects he only gave her that job to shut her up and keep her out of the way. The log that was apparently going to be their boat was at least five hundred feet long and as big around as four elephants, if the amount of bark she pulled off of it was any indication.

"The boat will float better, it's easier to carve without the bark on and it kept you out of my way for most of the afternoon."

"I knew it," she muttered.

He shrugs. "Well. I didn't want you to call me 'Cas' again."

" _Shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up!_ "

"I just don't know how you want me to react to that," he continues mildly, but obviously biting back the smile that teasing Ruby so mercilessly gives him.

"I want you to. Shut. Up."

"I mean, what if you tried to hug me or something?"

Ruby mentally begs the earth to swallow her whole. Or better yet, swallow _him_ whole. "Die," she tells him.

Castiel chuckles, which Ruby think is a really unflattering sound on him, and picks up a coconut. "I'm teasing you. It was just strange --"

"And creepy. I didn't mean it. It was an accident. I was drunk."

"It made me miss Dean," Castiel says, staring at the coconut in his hand because maybe it reminds him of the stupidest Winchester brother's big round head. Ruby takes it from him and tosses it next to the fire to warm up. Castiel gives her an annoyed look, and snatches it back. "Don't cook this one," he tells her.

"Oh man, that's not your Wilson, is it?" If it is, Ruby doesn't think she can handle his emotional break down once they finally have to eat that coconut. She might really have to drown him if he starts to cry.

"My what?"

"Like in that movie with Tom Hanks. Where he gets stuck on the island with a volleyball? And the volleyball becomes his best friend?"

"This is a coconut," he says seriously, glancing between her and the coconut like she's finally lost her mind.

"I just meant... Never mind. Shut up. We're eating that coconut tonight because you're not allowed to bond with it. It's not replacement Dean, even if it's probably smarter." She puts it back near the fire. "No," she scolds when he reaches for it again. "I'll break your hands."

"I never bonded with it," Castiel says indignantly. Still, he looks away when she cracks it open.

"Wuss," Ruby says, but with very little venom. "Hey, maybe we can eat one of them?" Two of the bigger, braver lorises have crept closer to the fire to watch the cooking.

"No," Castiel says. "I don't think that's a good idea."

Ruby thinks he still feels bad about making the first one upset on the first day, but since he's the only currently holding the knife, she doesn't bother arguing. Besides, they're probably really fast. By the time they eat their coconut, they're both too tired to even consider doing anything besides passing out in the sand anyways.

Castiel pours a few empty coconut shells of ocean water over the fire to make sure it's out. "It's strange, being tired. Very unpleasant."

Ruby snorts. "Yeah, well, get used to it. If you're seriously planning on having us row back to Florida or wherever, like a pair of stalwart Cubans, we're going to be tired pretty much forever."

"Florida? No."

"Wait, what?" Ruby is suddenly very worried about whatever his plan is.

"Well, I don't think we're in the Caribbean. So, we don't want to head for Florida. I think we're in southeast Asia, maybe near Malaysia?" He's looking around like maybe there will be one of those helpful not-monkey lorises holding a sign that say 'America, 150,000 miles that way!'

She stares for a second, trying to picture a globe or a map. "Wait so. We have to get all the way across the Pacific Ocean? Oh my G... Gosh. We're going to die."

"I don't think we have to get all the way to the United States. Isn't it possible our power will start to come back the further we get from here?"

Ruby shrugs and wiggles the toes of her boots in the sand. "It better. I'm not rowing a hundred and fifty trillion miles, not for anything. I'll stay here and eat those loris things for the rest of my life. I am not dying in the middle of the ocean in a stupid boat with a stupid angel."

"It's more like eight thousand miles," he says. "Don't be so over dramatic. Are you going to sleep tonight?"

She looks between him and the one, singular shelter they have. She doesn't want the prickly feeling of being watched and judged that she gets just by being within ten feet of him to bother her all night and she definitely doesn't want a repeat of the night before, but she's damn tired. Especially considering all the work they have ahead of them in the morning with the boat and everything. "Yeah. Just don't... touch me."

He rolls his eyes. "Yeah, that's definitely what I was going to do."

"Wouldn't put it past you, you creepy little thing. You spend too much time with Dean and I think his bad habits are rubbing off on you."

\--

It takes another four days before the big log even starts to resemble a boat. Four more days of smelly durian fruit, four days of trying to convince Castiel to help her catch another bird, four more days of feeling her hair tangle further and further beyond the point of salvage. Her entire fucking world for a hair brush, seriously.

"I'm going to have dreadlocks," Ruby complains while Castiel uses his sword to carve another chunk out of the log.

"Well, that's just _dreadful,_ " he says, without looking up.

"You're not funny, you're just a bad person."

"I am funny. I'm the funniest angel in the garrison. Well. The second funniest."

Ruby kicks a chunk of wood at his ankles. "Not even."

He just smiles calmly while the wood bounces off his legs and keeps working on the boat.

\--

The next night, another big storms blows in off the water, bigger than the one that soaked Ruby and ruined her hut. It's bad enough that one of the little lorsises, maybe the one who listened so attentively to Ruby when she first showed up, crawls in between Ruby and Castiel inside the hut and cowers there until the storm finally passes late in the afternoon.

The three of them emerge blinking in the sun and happy to not have been struck by lightning. The half-finished boat is overturned on its side and covered in sand, but Castiel and Ruby dig it out and get to work finishing carving out the interior. The little loris sits a few feet away and watches with rapt attention. Ruby thinks it's quite a bit smaller than the one she first met. She calls him 'Buddy' and they feed him bits of coconut when they stop for a break. For all she hates it, Buddy scarfs it down and holds his little hands out for more.

"You should encourage him. Wild animals are meant to stay wild. Feeding him is not going to teach him the self-reliance he needs to survive," Castiel says seriously.

"You're just jealous because now you don't have the stupidest hair."

Buddy gives her a strange look and Ruby wonders if he understands. "If I had a damn hairbrush, I'd fix it for you, Bud," she says apologetically.

Castiel rolls his eyes and points down the beach towards the almost-boat. With him finally letting Ruby help out, the boat takes shape rapidly.

"It's technically a dugout canoe," Castiel tells her after the ninetieth time she calls it a dinghy.

\--

The next morning, the dugout canoe is read to set sail. Ruby had spent the night before mentally preparing a list of what sort of food they'd need and how they were going to transport water and about how far they could get before dying horribly. She's betting on 'just out of sight of land,' because they're sure as Hell not getting all the way to San Diego.

"You know we're not headed for California, right?" Castiel asks. Sometimes she fears his magic psychic angel powers are coming back. She tries not to think of Sam's penis.

"And I'm not psychic," he says a second later. "It's just obvious on your face you're worried about dying."

When another thirty seconds pass without him commenting on Sam's penis, she thinks she's in the clear.

"Then you were worried I can read your thoughts because you've been having indecent thoughts, is that it?"

Ruby blushes scarlet, and hurls a handful of wood shavings at him.

"Hey now, as long as you're not having those thoughts about Buddy or myself, I won't object. You're an adult, you can make your own choices."

She throws another handful of shavings and a couple of curse words, and stalks off into the jungle to find a family of innocent little fruit doves she can roast for the trip and make Castiel cry again.

\--

"Just eff-why-eye," Ruby says, eyeing the boat at the water's edge closely. "I mean, like, just so you know, we are so going to die in this thing."

"You've been dead longer than anything and I was never really alive," he reminds her, dropping their food into the bottom of the boat, wrapped neatly in his ruined blue suit jacket. The first time he took off the suit and dress shirt, Ruby thought it was so weird to see him in a tee shirt, but now he's been like that for a few days and she's forgotten it took nearly a year to see his arms in the first place. "Besides, staying here is no longer an option."

That's the absolute truth, but Ruby still wishes she had a cigarette or four to calm her nerves. "So, we're really doing this?"

"Yes," Castiel smiles. He's resolute, that much is obvious. Ruby hopes that's enough to hold off a storm. Because trying to cross the ocean in a canoe is already too many odds stacked against them. A storm would just be cruel.

"You have the rest of the food and water?" he asks. She holds up her parcel and puts it on the floor of the canoe as well.

"Okay. Let's do this," Castiel says, hefting the paddle he carved the night before.

"Mook?" says Buddy, looking hopefully between them.

"There's some coconut scraps up by the fire pit, I think," Ruby tells him. "Go on, Buddy."

The little loris doesn't go.

"You can't come with us," Ruby tells him flatly.

"Mooooook," he whines, clearly distraught. He clutches his tiny loris fingers at her boots.

"He doesn't want to leave you. He thinks you're his mother."

Ruby rolls her eyes at Castiel. "He doesn't think that. He just wants our food. Go on, Buddy, it's better for you here."

The loris gives her as scathing look as if to say _'oh, but not you? You're too good for my island? What the hell is so great about your special magic United States place? I think it sounds boring and overly conventional, even though I am far too cool a loris to care about that kind of thing. I think it's worth a few moments of your time, missy, to reflect on why you think you're so much better than everyone else.'_ Ruby's pretty sure lorises in general would be very verbose, could they actually speak.

"Let's bring him because he's not going to let us leave without him, right, Buddy? I can transport him back here to live a free life once I've regained my powers."

And that's how Ruby ends up sitting in the front of the canoe with the tiny loris perching on her shoulder like a parrot.

"So, I feel like a really weird pirate," she sighs, once Castiel has pushed the canoe into the water and jumped in the back. He takes off his wet shoes and picks up the paddle.

"Pirates never say they feel like pirates. You probably just have indigestion."

She shifts in her wooden seat, and grumbles to herself about whoever taught the angel sarcasm should be shot. "This seat isn't even comfortable. My butt hates you."

"Tell it the feeling is absolutely mutual. I thought we would get to Malaysia faster if we also had a sail," he says from behind her. "So I made us a little something." Ruby turns in time to see him unfastening a few poles from the side of the canoe by his feet and straightening them out.

"It's a little flimsy, so it won't hold up to strong wind, but it might catch a stiff breeze for us."

Ruby's about to make a joke about catching a stiff anything, but then Castiel's homemade sail unfurls and the sight of the horrible old trench coat, dirty, partially shredded and smelling intensely of sweat and vomit flapping over her head makes her stare in awe instead. Buddy claps his hands when he sees it.

"Wow," she says, and quite rightly, too.

\--

Half an hour into their trip. Buddy has long since gotten bored of sitting on her shoulder and is curled around Castiel's ankles in the bottom of the boat instead. It's be a quiet thirty minutes, which Ruby supposes is a good thing to start with.

They're still learning the ins and outs of boatmanship, if that even is the word for it. Ruby doesn't think it is. Why would it have 'boat' and 'ship' in the same word? That was just ridiculous. And she was thinking about words when the thought hit her.

"All boats have names. This is her maiden voyage, and she needs a kick ass name." She pats the side of the canoe.

"I want to call her _Purity_."

Ruby laughs. "Uh, no. That's terrible."

"Well, she was my --"

"I'm Captain! Called it, no backsies!"

Castiel stares. "You can't call Captain."

"Uhh, I just did. You can be the court jester."

He splashes her with water from his paddle. "That's not even a nautical rank."

"Fine, you can be treasurer," she grins.

"No."

"Vice Principal?"

"No." Castiel scowls.

"Prima ballerina."

"Ruby, stop it."

She won't; she's having far too much fun. "Head gardener! Sommelier! Oh, no, no, science officer!"

He stops her before she goes mad with power. "I'm going to be first mate, and Buddy can be Chief Loris in Charge of Planning and Snuggles." Castiel has been being especially nice to Buddy in order to make up for shouting at the other loris on the first day. He knows they might not know each other and assuming they do just because they're both lorises makes him a total racist douchebag, but just on the off chance they _do_ know each other and they _have_ talked about him, he wants Buddy to know he's okay with lorises even though they aren't monkeys. Maybe _because_ they're not monkeys. Yeah. Who needs monkeys anyways?

"I'm the Captain," Ruby says again. "And I hereby name this ship, _The S. S. Bad Touch_."

"I will mutiny if you call her that," Castiel warns.

"Too late, I said 'hereby.'"

"Mutiny."

"Hereby!"

Castiel mutters something in Enochian. Ruby vows to sleep with one eye open in case he tries something.

And so the maiden voyage of The S. S. Bad Touch sets out.

\--

"You're not actually going to touch me, are you?"

Ruby had failed at her goal to be careful sleeping around Castiel, in case he actually tries to tip her overboard, because she jerks awake when he starts talking.

"What? Huh?" She swipes her hand over her chin in case of any accidental drooling mishaps. It's not classy, but it has been known to happen.

"I said, you're not going to touch me, right?"

She worries he drank the ocean water, the one thing she told him not to do. "What the hell are you on?"

"You called the ship Bad Touch, but...That's just a phrase, right? I've heard Dean say it when he and Sam are in the bathroom sometimes."

"Okay, wow," Ruby says, trying not to gag. "I don't need to hear that. No one needs to hear that. And no, Angel Pie, I don't think there's enough money in all the banks in all the countries on this entire planet to pay me to touch you like the way Dean touches Sam when they're in the bathroom together."

"Not even when you call me Cas?" Castiel asks, smirking grossly.

" _Shut up shut up shut up!_ "

\--

"These durians are okay, but I could eat sixty-one and a half dolphins," Ruby says, when they see a pod of dolphins frolic past. She spits a durian seed over the side and watches it sink under the water. The dolphins look like maybe they're made of rubber or something, but Ruby imagines them tasting like sweet cotton candy. With gravy. Her mouth waters.

Casitel rolls his eyes, a human trait Ruby thinks he's gotten insanely good at doing in the last few weeks. So good that sometimes she idly imagines gouging them out with an ice cream scoop. "No, you couldn't," he says. "You would be so sick."

You're thinking of yourself, lightweight."

Buddy licks a few drops of fresh water from the side of one of their shitty coconut thermoses and says happily, "mook!"

"Buddy says you're a lightweight, Castiel," Ruby smiles.

"A dolphin could eat sixty-one a half Buddys," Castiel reminds them both solemnly, dipping his paddle back into the water. He was the picture of serenity, but Ruby was suddenly feeling very creeped out.

Neither Ruby nor Buddy makes any more dolphin eating jokes that afternoon.

\--

Right before sunset, Ruby starts to sing because the endless sound of waves and wind is making her want to stab herself in the ear drums for fun. 

"The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down of the big lake they called _Gitche Gumee._ The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead when the skies of November turn gloomy," she sings softly, staring out over the water. It's the only sailing song she knows.

"With a load of iron ore twenty-six thousand tons more than the _Edmund Fitzgerald_ weighed empty, that good ship and true was a bone to be chewed when the gales of November came early."

Castiel is still paddling idly, turning the boat a little to one side or the other as he sees fit, but he stops and lays the paddle across his lap then to listen.

"The ship was the pride of the American side coming back from some mill in Wisconsin. As the big freighters go, it was bigger than most with a crew and good captain well-seasoned."

"What's this song called, Ruby?" he asks quietly when she pauses for a breath.

" _The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald._ It's the only boat song I know."

"All the same," he sighs, "can you not sing a song about a ruined ship?"

Ruby sighs too, and lays her head back against the side of the canoe. "I'm bored already. This trip sucks."

"That's because it's not supposed to be a fun trip," Castiel reminds her. "We're trying to get back to civilization so we can save the earth, remember?"

Ruby sighs even louder because she knows it irritates him. "We can't do both?"

Castiel sets his paddle across his knees and glares. "You idea of sing along is not fun. I Spy wasn't any fun. What do you think we should do, pray tell?"

"Not that," Ruby sneers at him. "Like God could help us now."

"You do not want to start a fist fight in the canoe," Castiel warns. His anger is just visible beneath the false veneer of restraint. Any other time, with this level of extreme boredom setting in, she would have started something, but the water is deep, she knows. Deep and cold and full of monsters.

Ruby sighs instead of snarking. "Fine, whatever. Give me the paddle and I'll show you how to do it."

\--

The first night is bitter cold and windy as all get out, but the next morning dawns before any of them freeze all the way solid. They try playing _I Spy_ again for about eighty-nine seconds before it gets too boring and Castiel cat naps while Ruby paddles because the wind has died down too much for the trench coat sail to propel them any further and she bitches every time he tries.

An hour or so later, the dolphins from the day before are back, and Ruby nudges Castiel with her foot. "Yo, you know more about animals and stuff than I do, what are they doing?"

He blinks and sits up, grimacing when he sees his sun burned arms. "I don't know. They're circling the boat. That's unusual. Maybe they heard your comments yesterday, and they're here for revenge?"

"Yeah, still not the funniest angel in the garrison," she says, she can clearly see the closest dolphin has murder in his eyes when he gets closer. The boat shakes violently and Buddy clings to Ruby's neck, claws extending deep into her skin. "I'm scared," she blurts out. "Also, ow."

Again, the boat rocks, hit from something underneath. Castiel reaches out toward Ruby and she doesn't know why, when the whole boat pitches and everything goes black.

The water is freezing, colder than anything she thinks she's felt in ages. Objectively, she knew this would be the case if she ever did fall in, but now, experiencing it in real time that stretched like slow-mo, the coldness of it is almost unreal.

She's disoriented and her lungs are immediately screaming for oxygen, but Ruby forces herself not to breathe in. She's not sure which way is up, and she tries to relax so she'll float toward the surface, but it takes too long and her body instinctively tries for air.

A strong hand on the collar of her now-so-far-beyond-the-point-of-repair jacket pulls her up and she breaks the surface coughing and spitting water. Ruby tries to open her eyes, but the salt stings and she can't stop choking.

"We have to right the boat," Castiel is saying, pushing at her arms and trying to get her attention. "Now, Ruby, do it now. You've really upset them."

Ruby finally manages to open her eyes only to see a very pissed off looking dolphin swimming closer and closer. Buddy is wrapped around the top of Castiel's head like the ugliest hat ever with his wide, terrified eyes, but Castiel is calm and commanding and that reassuring. Ruby gets one hand on the wooden side of the boat and starts trying to flip it back over. She doesn't think about how they'll get back in, or what will stop the dolphins from flipping them out again.

"Stop," Castiel says, and she cranes her head around about to tear a strip off him, but he's talking to the ringleader dolphin. "They were just joking yesterday. We're all vegetarians here."

Ruby really doesn't think he'll be able to talk the nasty dolphins out of their plan to murder and eat them, but the one in charge stops and gives Castiel a look that Ruby imagines says something like _I'm not convinced you're not crazy or lying, good sir, but I will stay your watery execution and listen for the time being, as I am both a gentleman and a big stupid rubbery sea beast._

She wonders, while she treads water desperately trying to keep her head above water, if maybe she's got an overactive imagination. She realizes it's a weird thought to be having right before she gets brutally killed by a pod of dolphin-monsters, but it's not like there's anyone about to judge her for it.

"It was a joke, a bad joke. I'm the funny one," Castiel tells the dolphins, holding up one placating hand. "Ask anyone."

Buddy makes the saddest little _'mook'_ noise, because even as a wee baby loris who has only been hanging around Castiel for a few days, he knows the angel is woefully unfunny. Also, a woefully shitty liar. Even Buddy knows they're screwed.

The dolphin closest to them makes a very obvious 'kill the land dwellers!' noise and all the others click and chuckle and whistle, a deadly chorus much more sinister than anything the demons Ruby worked with in Hell ever came up with. She makes a mental note to bring this up in a few minutes when she's back there.

"Dolphins are like the bears of the sea," Castiel mutters, obviously at the same conclusion that Ruby and Buddy came to minutes ago. They are so screwed.

One of the sassier members of the dolphin gang noses at Ruby's jacket and nips at her shoulder. She smacks it on the nose and glares daggers. "I hope we give you indigestion, you marine freaks," she spits.

"Did you know that dolphins are responsible for approximately six human deaths per year via injuries sustained during forced sexual congress?" Castiel asks. It's not panic in his voice, or warning, just mildly conversational.

"I hate you," Ruby tells him. It's by and far not the first time, but it just might be the last.

"And that's force on the part of the dolphins. I'm not sure on the statistics regarding humans forcing themselves on dolphins. 

"I hate you, I hate you, I hate you," it becomes her mantra. She whispers it under her breath, edging the words out through chattering teeth. The dolphins circle closer, bringing them together in the centre of the death ring. Ruby's mostly numb under the surface, which is nice she thinks vaguely, because maybe she won't feel their sharp little teeth chewing her tendons, but she does feel Castiel's hand wrap tightly around hers.

"I'm sorry. The boat was my idea," he whispers.

"No, I'm sorry," she whispers back. "These dolphins are going to _Bad Touch_ us pretty severely in the next few minutes." She discards the last of her dignity because like her boots and her once-cute leather jacket, it's just weighing her down at the moment, and buries her face in his neck so she doesn't have to watch the slaughter.

Everything goes very dark. Darker than it should have from just hiding her eyes. It's a dark that gets inside her mind. Ruby died before, once, a long time ago, and this isn't the same. She also can't feel razor sharp dolphin teeth gnawing the gristle off her bones.

"What's going --" she gets a mouthful of gross salt water before she can shout anything else. This time, she's sure she's dying.

\--

"Ruby! Cas!" Sam's squeaky, cracking, terrified voice is ridiculously soothing compared to the horrible death cackles of the dolphins from half a minute earlier. "You guys are soaked! And... cuddling?"

Ruby tries to spring away from Castiel, but they're sprawled in an undignified heap on some grungy motel carpet and her body is still mostly frozen and unresponsive.

"Yeah, what the shit?" Dean asks, neatly reiterating Sam's previous point.

"Don't worry," she croaks with a voice still thawing out. "I didn't kiss your weird boyfriend."

"And we only slept together nine times," Castiel adds. Presumably to be helpful, but Ruby thinks she detects the faintest hint of mocking. How is he even warm enough to be being a jerk right now? She wishes she still had a coconut to throw at him. If she was lucky, one of the dolphins was choking to death on one right now.

"Wow, too much information, man," Dean says cheerfully. He lends an arm and hauls Castiel to his feet. "Also, we're taking you to get tested for diseases or something."

Thankfully, Sam cuts in before Ruby can pull Dean's head off his shoulders. "You guys must have had some adventure, huh? 

"Regrettably, yes," Castiel says. He starts telling the Winchesters everything in painfully boring detail that Ruby doesn't want to relive, but Sam is at her side with a towel and one of his old hoodies which is soft and warm and smells like him, like the open road, motel soap, and gun oil, instead of smelling like burnt coconut husk, salt water, and Heaven's most unwashed soldier.

"I'm glad you're safe," Sam whispers, pulling her in for a kiss. "Oh, ew," he says awkwardly right before their lips touch. "Sorry, but you reek."

She knows it's true, but it's painful to hear. Ruby smacks him on the arm. "Kiss me, asshole."

Dean picks up the small, shivering lump of fur that was Buddy from where he had tumbled off of Castiel's head. The loris perks up in Dean's warm hands and starts cooing obscenely, the happiest loris in the room.

"I thought you were my friend," Ruby tells the little loris. "Traitor."

Dean holds his hands in front of his face, bringing Buddy to eye level. "Wait, and you brought us a little monkey too? He's kind of cute and stupid looking. We should call him Sam Junior."

"That's Buddy. And he's not a monkey," Castiel said.

"Mook!" Buddy says indignantly, glaring from inside Dean's cupped hands.

"Well, you're not!"

\--

Four days later, Ruby finally thinks she's seen the last of the tangles in her hair. She's under the blankets in the motel bed, just relaxing and feeling the softness of the blankets. Also, there isn't sand in her unmentionable areas any more. She mentions this.

"Please stop talking. Forever," Castiel says without looking up from the book he's reading. He's sitting toe-to-toe with Ruby on the bed and Buddy is nestled between his knees.

"What, you don't want updates about the state of my genitals?" she asks, stretching out under the blankets and tipping his book on the floor on purpose.

"No."

"Why not? I could probably set up a Twitter account for my vag. You could get updates right on your phone. Talk about convenience. "

"The golden age of communication," Castiel sighs. He does not hand over his phone.

Buddy has thus far been ignoring them, but when Ruby shifts yet again, he crawls over to her and clings to her hair, chittering softly.

"I think he's telling you to go to sleep because you're annoying," Castiel says. "I agree, Buddy.

Dean comes in through the door with Sam right behind him and they both do a double-take. Dean shudders. "You guys are really starting to freak me out. Can you stop being friends?"

"We're not friends," they said in unison..

Dean's eyes nearly bug out of his head. "I'm not okay with this," he tells them flatly.

Ruby kicks Castiel backwards off the bed because Dean is annoyingly right for once, and Castiel lets out a string of fairly impressive, though non-blasphemous, curse words.

"It's not so different than it was before," Sam sighs.

Ruby doesn't say anything, because Castiel and Dean are trying to talk over each other about how terrible they thought she was and Sam was trying to talk over both of them about the next seal about to break open in Who-Cares-Ville, Iowa, and she doesn't feel like adding to the noise. Instead, she wraps the blanket around herself a little tighter and runs a hand through her hair. _Gosh darn, it's good to be home._


End file.
